How does sound going slower in water make it hard to talk to someone underwater?
Sound travels faster in water than in air. The speed of sound in air under typical conditions is about 343 meters per second, while the speed of sound in water is about 1,480 meters per second. Fundamentally, standard sound is a compression wave traveling though a material. You can think of a material as a grid of heavy balls (representing the atoms) connected by springs (representing the bonds between the atoms). When you push on a few balls in the grid, they move closer to their neighbors on one side and the springs connecting the balls and their neighbors compress. But the compressed springs bounce back, replacing the balls to their original position. In the process, however, the neighboring balls get pushed, causing the springs connecting them and their neighbors to compress. This process repeats in domino fashion and you get a compression wave traveling though the grid of balls. In a similar way, standard sound is just a compression wave traveling through the atoms and bonds in a material.
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